Creativity Seven Days Walking - Box Set This has been the soundtrack to all my writing this year. Now Ludovico Einaudi's SEVEN DAYS WALKING project is complete (it was originally released over seven months). The download is around now, but the CD box set is available from November 1st. This is perfect Autumn music, perfect
Journal Hotel Okura Monocle made this 5-minute film about the Hotel Okura in Tokyo. The whole thing is a wonder of 60s Japanese design. https://monocle.com/film/design/end-of-an-era/
Journal Is Social Media Over? That's a stupidly broad question, to which the answer is very obviously "no". But I can't be the only person who has grown to loathe the circular conversations and pointless fights on Twitter and Facebook and who has started avoiding Instagram because it just
Journal Incredible picture of the Russian volcano eruption, taken from the ISS Sharing this from Colossal: https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2019/07/raikoke-eruption/
Journal Featured Suzanne Moxhay Suzanne Moxhay is an artist working with photographs, which is to say that she has an incredibly intricate process, inspired by the matte painting technique movies used to use.
Journal Featured Suffolk Landscapes At the end of last week, I spent a couple of days up on the Suffolk coast, on a research/inspiration trip for the second series of our Mystery Machine podcast. I also found some time to experiment with some landscape photography.
Journal Some Amsterdam images An impromptu evening visit to the NDSM wharf; an old dockyard being transformed into a cultural enclave and artists' colony. Pictures taken last year on a Fuji X-E3 with a 35mm lens. Starting off at going through Centraal Station to ferry at the backWaiting for the ferryCrossing the waterAn
Journal These images are incredible Tennis Balls and Swim Caps Crowd the Frame in New Time-Lapse Compositions by Pelle Cass More to be seen at COLOSSAL [https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2019/05/new-photos-by-pelle-cass/]
Journal Fugitive Writing Machines The exciting news is that I have ordered a typewriter. It’s a Hermes 3000 which was manufactured in Switzerland in 1965 and is, I am reliably informed, “the Rolls Royce of typewriters”. This is a peculiar draw for me, as I’ve never had any interest in owning an
Journal Digital Minimalism I’m reading DIGITAL MINIMALISM [http://infodump.blog/] by Cal Newport, author of the excellent DEEP WORK. From the Amazon blurb: > The urge to pick up our phones every few minutes has become a nervous twitch that shatters our time into shards too small to be present. Our addiction
Journal California Typewriter I finally caught up with the documentary feature CALIFORNIA TYPEWRITER last night and now I’m obsessed with finding a good reconditioned typewriter (I have an old Remington Rand that weighs a ton, but I’m after a Smith Corona Silent or maybe a Hermes). This is the perfect documentary
Journal Featured Ludovico Einaudi - Seven Days Walking A great writing/reading/thinking companion, the first two albums (so far) in Ludovico Einaudi “Seven Days Walking” series – he’s releasing one a month for seven months – are sublime. From the Qobuz write-up: > "After Elements in 2016, Ludovico Einaudi is continuing his exploration of nature with Seven
Journal Mythological Monsters A friend recently asked me for some recommendations for books on the mythology and folklore of the British Isles, with specific reference to monsters and mythical creatures. I grabbed some books down from the shelves and took snaps of them for him and I figured they might be useful or
Journal Deadwood, the movie One ought only ever be cautiously optimistic about movie trailers, but this has me squealing with delight.
Journal Short, Sharp Shocks Austin Kleon’s new book “Keep Going [https://austinkleon.com/keepgoing/]” is the latest in his incredibly inspiring series on creative practice. Kleon’s books are fast and punchy and great to look at and I find I go back to them whenever inspiration or motivation are flagging. A few
Journal Daily Routines I stumbled across this infographic, which is really interesting https://podio.com/site/creative-routines
Journal The Red Room One of the reasons I am who I am and do what I do is because of a BBC show that broadcast when I was eight years old. It was called Spine Chillers and it was essentially Jackanory with ghost stories. I have never thought to look for it, assuming
Journal Breaking The Screenplay Imagine you’re a development person. You have a pile of scripts on your desk and you have to wade through them...
Journal A Best Of List... Inspired by discovering this list online earlier... …and because I hardly ever do lists, I thought I’d take a run at my Best Movies Of All Time. By “best” I mean favourite and by “all time” I mean today. So, here are my favourite movies today, in no particular
Journal Featured Rolling Up Characters - Let the random in... I’ve lately been toying with a new way of generating minor characters, a way that allows them to be born outside of the story and thereby forces the story to morph itself to accommodate them.
